Other days
100 YEARS AGO Oct. 10, 1921
FORT SMITH — A raid Saturday afternoon at the home of W. B. “Jake” Thompson … by Federal Enforcement Officer John T. Tisdale, Sheriff Blake Harper, and Earle Tisdale, netted two completely equipped copper distilleries, a quantity of corn liquor, and 120 gallons of mash, secreted under the kitchen floor, the officers said. Thompson used the kitchen stove to furnish heat for the boilers, it was said. Thompson told the officers he was a native of Tennessee and had been noted in his own community for the quality of his peach brandy.
50 YEARS AGO Oct. 10, 1971
KNOXVILLE — An American Airlines astrojet carrying 61 passengers, including the widow of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, was delayed about an hour at McGhee Tyson Airport Friday because of a bomb threat. Trenton Clark Teis, 18, of Johnson City, Tenn., an Army inductee, was charged with making the false bomb report. Assistant Airport manager Jerry Black said Teis, due out on a 10 p.m. flight for basic training, made comments to several persons in the terminal about a bomb. Airport police took Teis into custody in the terminal lobby and called FBI Agents.
25 YEARS AGO Oct. 10, 1996
FORT SMITH — Gerald Eugene Kirby, 46, of Chester pleaded innocent Tuesday in U.S. District Court to three counts of possession of firearms and a destructive device, one count of manufacturing marijuana and one count of possession with intent to distribute marijuana. Kirby will be tried Nov. 18 on the charges, which stem from a July 6 incident in which he lost a hand when a pipe bomb exploded at his rural home. After the explosion, investigators searched his home and property and found artillery and groundburst simulators; commercial high-grade explosives; several booby-trap mechanisms; about 30 guns, some with silencers; 10 pounds of processed marijuana and 318 marijuana plants in five patches on 40 acres.
10 YEARS AGO Oct. 10, 2011
■ A man linked by DNA to a 21-year-old Little Rock homicide told investigators he can’t explain how his genetic material could be found at the scene of the killing or say whether he had ever slain anyone. But 42-year-old John Bentley Yancey of Louann also told detectives he had been a “very violent” man who at least once hurt someone while sleepwalking. He also said he has hardly any recollection of his violent behavior and that he’s had mental problems since childhood. Yancey, serving a 30-year prison sentence from Ouachita County for a September 2009 attack that disfigured his wife, was charged with the July 1990 slaying of 33-year-old Treva Parks about six months after the police interview. Prosecutors are seeking a life sentence. “There’s a lot of things I don’t remember,” Yancey is heard saying during the interview. “It’s like even the charges I have now, I don’t even remember how I got them.”